It will be quite different from our first game. Here are some things which we don't like about current detective games.
- They have very carefully hand-crafted scenarios which are very expensive to create and therefore rarely allows the player to go off the tracks or to completely fail. Some of them don't even allow you to leave a crime scene until you've literally found all the relevant evidence. These games do a lot of hand-holding and player direction and rarely feel satisfying when you find the killer.
- You're forced to try to mind read the game designers intention and world view instead of really taking in the game scenario itself since the game world is primarily explained qualitatively instead of quantitively. For example in LA Noir I'm asked to judge whether a person is lying or not, but what I'm actually doing is judging a actors interpretation of somebody lying or speaking the truth.
- They rarely explore strategic gameplay / resource management aspects or if they do they go so far in that direction that they don't feel like a detective game anymore.
I'm not saying that we'll be able to fix all these problems, but these problems are at least what drove us to think that there would be some interesting game design work in this space. It turns out to be quite hard, but I'm excited about our current prototype. Will take some more time before you'll be able to play it though unfortunately.
Oh.. and it is set in Berlin of the 1920s, which is really a quite fascinating and relatively unexplored setting.
Some of them don't even allow you to leave a crime scene until you've literally found all the relevant evidence.
The GUMESHOE Rpg System would says this was a feature not a bug.
Failing to solve a case because I couldn't piece all the evidence together is an acceptable fail. Failing to solve a case because I couldn't even find the evidence is infuriating.
Agreed, you should be able to find all the evidence. Curious Case will feature redundant evidence, so that you will not be reliant on finding that one specific trail in the corner of some screen and it will allow you to explore the scenes in your own order freely.
Personally I dislike detective games forcing me through a linear sequence of rooms and not letting me continue until I've done everything that the game wants me to do. That's not what the fantasy of being a detective is about for me.
Thanks for pointing out the Gumshoe System. I read about it before, but I'll make sure to check it out again. I'm a big fan of Robin Laws previous works Feng Shui and Over The Edge.
In my not very humble at all opinion I find the 3 clue rule is just an attempt to apply a band aid over the problem that GUMSHOE eliminates entirely.
The problem is that PCs can miss clues through not fault of their own. The three clue rule simply throws in enough clues that the PCs would have to be very unlucky to miss them all. Gumshoe ensures that the PCs never miss vital clues because Gumshoe contends that finding clues isn't the fun part of an investigation - interpreting them is the fun bit.
I cannot recommend GUMSHOE enough as an investigative system.
As a GM it's whole approach to how to structure RPG investigations was like a hammer blow of clarity. As I read it I was mentally going "Of Course, it's so obvious" pretty much every other sentence.
- They have very carefully hand-crafted scenarios which are very expensive to create and therefore rarely allows the player to go off the tracks or to completely fail. Some of them don't even allow you to leave a crime scene until you've literally found all the relevant evidence. These games do a lot of hand-holding and player direction and rarely feel satisfying when you find the killer.
- You're forced to try to mind read the game designers intention and world view instead of really taking in the game scenario itself since the game world is primarily explained qualitatively instead of quantitively. For example in LA Noir I'm asked to judge whether a person is lying or not, but what I'm actually doing is judging a actors interpretation of somebody lying or speaking the truth.
- They rarely explore strategic gameplay / resource management aspects or if they do they go so far in that direction that they don't feel like a detective game anymore.
I'm not saying that we'll be able to fix all these problems, but these problems are at least what drove us to think that there would be some interesting game design work in this space. It turns out to be quite hard, but I'm excited about our current prototype. Will take some more time before you'll be able to play it though unfortunately.
Oh.. and it is set in Berlin of the 1920s, which is really a quite fascinating and relatively unexplored setting.